Deadline looms for SDUSD school applications

In this photo from January, music teacher John Reynolds at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts ran his class through warm ups as parents took a tour to learn more about the school. San Diego Unified has been recognized as one of the best communities for music education.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

In this photo from January, music teacher John Reynolds at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts ran his class through warm ups as parents took a tour to learn more about the school. San Diego Unified has been recognized as one of the best communities for music education.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

It’s about two weeks before San Diego Unified’s school-choice applications are due for families looking to opt out of their neighborhood campus, and Tracy Dahlkamp has already toured a half-dozen middle schools.

She’s determined to find the right education for her son — a fourth-grader who won’t even enter middle school until 2016.

“I’d love to be able to choose one of the neighborhood schools, but my son doesn’t always fit into the traditional box,” said Dahlkamp, who lives in San Carlos. “This a big decision. I’m trying to understand my choices.”

Dahlkamp is not alone in looking past the geographic convenience of the nearest public school.

A record 45.5 percent of students in the San Diego Unified School District this year rejected their neighborhood campus in favor of a charter, magnet, alternative-program or traditional school in a different neighborhood. That’s up from 44.1 percent last year.

The increase in school-choice participation is due in part to the proliferation of charter schools. But the numbers also reflect a national trend in which more families are looking at public education through the lens of a consumer.

San Diego Unified’s school-choice program is consistently ranked among the best in the nation. The Brookings Institution and a team of researchers from the Broad Prize in Urban Education (the district was a finalist for the award in 2013) both recently cited the district’s program as top-notch.

Yet San Diego Unified is scaling back its school-choice offerings as it promotes neighborhood campuses. The district’s goal is to appeal to students and families by ensuring that every neighborhood has a quality school by 2020. At the same time, the district has tightened its review process for new charter schools while easing up on the assistance it offers would-be charters that are unable to navigate the application process themselves.

School board trustee John Lee Evans said San Diego Unified can strengthen its own offerings and still maintain a healthy choice program. The result of the district’s complicated Vision 2020 plan, he said, may shake up the landscape of schools in San Diego because many campuses rely on outside students to occupy a majority of their desks.

“Parents should not feel like they have to leave their neighborhood to get their children a decent education,” Evans said. “There are a lot of reasons to consider another school. Maybe the student wants to attend a performing arts school. But finding a quality education should not be a reason to (exercise) school choice.”

San Diego Unified once held a districtwide school-choice fair in Balboa Park, but the event has been canceled in favor of more modest opportunities such as an open-house day on various campuses.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

•In general, school-choice applications for the San Diego Unified School District are due by Feb. 15.

•Charter schools have their own application deadlines.

•For more details, including a complete list of schools, visit sandi.net/apply.

School-choice advocates have sponsored thousands of events across the country in recent days as part of the fourth-annual National School Choice Week, which will end Saturday. They want to encourage parents to study their options and exercise their rights.

Grover Whitehurst, a senior fellow at Brookings who tracks school-choice trends, said a lot of good has come from giving families options beyond the neighborhood campus.

“Parents are allowed choices in deciding which colleges their children go to. They are allowed to decide which preschool their children attend. But somebody is going to send them a letter telling them what school to go to? That doesn’t sit well anymore,” he said.

Whitehurst also said having more options has stirred competition among traditional public schools, forcing many to improve and innovate.

And perhaps the most compelling argument for choice, he said, is that it levels the playing field for families that can’t afford to live in pricey communities with the best-ranked campuses.

But choice doesn’t always lead to a better education. For San Diego Unified, district-run campuses outperform charters with the exception of middle schools, where charters perform slightly better on state tests than traditional schools.

Any student in San Diego Unified is eligible to attend any campus — subject to a menu of rules and enrollment programs.

Magnets draw students districtwide from geographical areas called clusters. Students applying to a magnet school in a region that has different demographics than their cluster would gain a higher priority for enrollment.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, students who attend — or are scheduled to attend — a campus that has failed to meet academic goals established by the federal government for two consecutive years may opt for a better-rated school.

Students also can participate in the district’s Voluntary Enrollment Exchange Program, which allows students in designated neighborhoods to attend schools elsewhere. Special attendance patterns are established by pairing predominantly white schools with predominantly nonwhite campuses.